Vallum 2017 Year in Review: Part One

2017 was a busy year for Vallum!

We launched Vallum: Contemporary Poetry issues 14:1 and 14:2, and published two new chapbooks: Mind of Spring by Jami Macarty, winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award, and entre-Ban by Bhanu Kapil, a collection of notes taken by Bhanu Kapil during the writing of her 2015 book, Ban en Banlieue. Read about our new chapbooks here.

Ali Blythe won the 2017 Award for Poetry with “Waking in the Preceding,” while Brian Henderson received second place with “The Incommensurate.” Honourable mentions went to Judy Little for “Ur Signs” and Roberta Senechal for “After Eden.”

We also hosted two pop-up shops, at Le Cagibi and the Concordia Co-op Bookstore, attended press fairs in Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, and Montreal, and hosted outreach workshops with new facilitators and organizers.

To commemorate Vallum’s busy and successful year, we asked this year’s contributors to share their thoughts on the books they read in 2017 and what’s in store for the year ahead.

Here’s what some of the writers published in Vallum Issue 14:1 said (stay tuned to hear from Vallum 14:2 poets, our chapbook authors, and 2017 contest winners):

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Sonnet L’Abbé

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
An Honest Woman, by Jónína Kirton.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Délani Valin, “No Buffalos”

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Kith by Divya Victor; Call Out by David Bradford; Full Metal Indigiqueer, Joshua Whitehead; Retreats by Karen Solie.

Sonnet L’Abbé is a professor at Vancouver Island University. Her chapbook, Anima Canadensis, came out with Junction Books in 2016, and won the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2017. L’Abbé’s upcoming collection, Sonnet’s Shakespeare,  will be published by McClelland and Stewart in 2018. Read “XVL,” from her forthcoming collection, in Issue 14:1. 

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Klara Du Plessis

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Titles are evading me—I know I read many exquisite poetry collections and now I can’t remember any!

One of my favourites is Erin Robinsong’s Rag Cosmology (BookThug), which I read while camping in Northern Quebec during the summer. There is an openness, integrity, playfulness, and ecological relevance to these, somewhat long-form, poems. Erin’s language has a way of dismantling itself and regrouping organically, which I admire and enjoy.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Captured somewhere proclaiming that I’m dedicating my life to poetry, I also remembered again, this year, that poetry necessitates variegating life, nurturing, instead of neglecting, an array of personal interests—attending contemporary dance performances and art exhibitions, getting a pedicure, taking time to care for yourself, taking care of others—the list could be endless, with each enumeration eventually holding the potential to spawn poetry.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I’m excited for Tess Liem’s debut from Coach House Books, and Shannon Maguire’s new Zip’s File: A Romance of Silence from BookThug. Admittedly, I haven’t researched the forthcoming lists of books to be published in 2018 yet, but I spent some time recently curating a list of titles for myself to explore in the coming months. A few of these include: Renee Gladman’s Calamities, Cecilia Vicuña’s Spit Temple (which is an anthology of transcriptions from performance projects), Etel Adnan’s Night, Gregoire Pam Dick’s Metaphysical Licks, Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia (I want to read more South African literature generally). I’d like to continue reading and supporting friends, whether in published form or not; chapbooks will definitely float onto my list, especially with new endeavours such as Rahila’s Ghost Press and Knife Fork Book’s imprint.

Klara du Plessis is a poet and critic residing in Montreal. Her chapbook Wax Lyrical (Anstruther Press, 2015) was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, and her debut collection Ekke is forthcoming (Palimpsest Press, 2018). She curates the monthly, Montreal-based Resonance Reading Series. Read her review of Alex Manley’s We are All Just Animals and Plants and Steven Heighton’s The Waking Comes Late in Issue 14:1. 

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Bill Neumire

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I particularly enjoyed In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
This isn’t a book, but I’m going to cheat a little and say that Paris Review’s new podcast series is my best poetry discovery of the year. They really put out a finely polished product that makes my commute much more enjoyable.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Laura Kasischke’s New and Selected Poems is one I’m really looking forward to this year.

Bill Neumire’s first book, Estrus, was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Award, and his recent poems appear in the Harvard Review Online, Beloit Poetry Journal, and West Branch. Read his review of Rob Taylor’s The News in Issue 14:1. 

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Jeffrey Mackie

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Catriona Wright—Table Manners

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Shannon Webb-Campbell

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I really want to read Sue Elmslie’s Museum of Kindness as I have enjoyed her past work. I also want to read Daljit Nagra from the UK as I have heard great things about his work.

Jeffrey Mackie is a Montreal poet. He has been featured on Mountain Lake PBS and in the anthology The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear), UK, 2016. He also has a new pamphlet collection available called Memory and Cities (Sitting Duck Press, 2016). In addition, he hosts the popular Literary Report on CKUT radio. Read his poem “The Days” in Issue 14:1. 

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Adam Lawrence

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Jeramy Dodds’s Drakkar Noir
-I had the pleasure of hearing Dodds recite some of the weird gems in this collection (I’ll never look at Santa Claus, amusement rides, or Canada in the same way).

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Peter Trower, Haunted Hills & Hanging Valleys, 1969-2004
– An excellent collection that offers a vivid portrait of the logging life – in terse, grim, joyful language.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Leonard Cohen’s The Flame and Christian Bök’s The Xenotext

Adam Lawrence’s writing has appeared in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Salon, JSTOR Daily, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry, and Feathertale.com. He’s taught writing and literature courses throughout eastern Canada, and is currently a freelance writer and editor in Montreal. Read his poem “Evolution” in Issue 14:1. 

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Maureen Korp

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Blaine Marchand.  My Head, Filled with Pakistan (2016)

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Rereading chunks of my big, old battered copy of The Collected Poems of W.B.Yeats (1940) as I worked my way through a spiffy, new biography of Yeats—Fiona Biggs, The Pocket Yeats (2017).

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Whatever I have not yet read by Patrick Leigh Fermor.  His letters have just been published. Also, a fine collection of poems by three Palestinian poets:  I remember My Name: Poetry by Samah Sabawi Ramzy Baroud, Jehan Bseiso (2016).

Maureen Korp is a military brat, the daughter of an American soldier. She grew up in faraway places including Okinawa, Hokkaido, Oklahoma, Texas, and Germany. Home base today is Ottawa. She is a university lecturer and researcher. Her field is visionary earth-centered art. Read her poem “Oahu” in Issue 14:1. 

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E. Canine McJabber—Winner, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Reading Catriona Wright’s Table Manners while road-tripping was a terrible idea, but only because it gave me all the cravings that gas station food could only fail to satisfy. It’s all tender and toothy.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
I’m super in love with the wealth of writing by queer, trans*, and Two-Spirit writers in Canada. Reading books by Kai Cheng Thom, Amber Dawn, Joshua Whitehead, and many others feels like coming home to a place I didn’t know I had the keys for.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?            
So far just my dogs’s horoscopes on the Astro Poets twitter page.

E. Canine McJabber has published poems in several journals and zines across Canada. A travelling salesperson by day, they live and write between Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. Their travel entourage consists of their two pups, Bonnie and Clyde. Read their award-winning poem “To My Mother, Aloud” in Issue 14:1. 

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James Mckee—2^nd Place Winner, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I have two choices for this question: Patricia Smith’s Incendiary Art, aptly titled if ever a book were, and Ange Mlinko’s Distant Mandate, exquisite & memorable in all the right ways.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Like many readers, I suspect, I only became aware of Max Ritvo’s work after he left us. His was a real loss. Of our older poets, this year I read through the books of Derek Walcott, one of our true contemporary masters.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I seem to be perpetually engaged in a losing battle to fill in the vast gaps in my reading, and next year will be no different: I plan to read for the first time (the shame!) Joseph Brodsky; to reread old favorites like Robert Pinsky, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell; and to give another try to poets whom in the past I haven’t much liked, like John Ashbery and Ted Hughes (maybe this time. . . )

A New Yorker by birth (and likely by death), James McKee’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Acumen, The Raintown Review, Saranac Review, The South Carolina Review, THINK, The Worcester Review, The Rotary Dial, and elsewhere. Read his award-winning poem “To a Young Man Seen Wearing a Bow Tie” in Issue 14:1. 

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Salvatore Difalco—Honorable Mention, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Favourite poetry book published this year was a tie with Peter Gizzi’s  Archeophonics and John Ashbery’s dreamy translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Alien vs Predator, a book by Michael Robbins. The book is OK, but the poem “Alien vs Predator” is enviably groovy. I dig it.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Anything but Canadian poetry, I’m afraid.

Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto. His work has appeared in print and online. Read his award-winning poem “Joy” in Issue 14:1. 

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J. Mark Smith

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
November (Bayeux Arts, 2017). The title refers to November, 1984 and the genocidal violence against Indian Sikhs that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi.  Jaspreet Singh’s family narrowly escaped death in those pogroms, and many of the poems in this book are about the long aftermath of that time. Witty, poignant, multilingual, erudite poems by a writer who has fully absorbed the lessons of the modernist and the postcolonial traditions.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Ten Poems of Francis Ponge translated by Robert Bly & Ten Poems of Robert Bly inspired by Francis Ponge (Owl’s Head Press, 1990). I can’t quite shake the feeling I’m not supposed to like Robert Bly, but he is a great translator and poet. An incredibly beautiful little book that I came across for the first time this year. Also: Stories from the Road Allowance People (Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2010; revised ed.) Translated by Maria Campbell. Technically, these are oral tales, originally in Michif, rendered into a Metis dialect of English by Campbell. But they’ve been set down with such attention to verbal and sonic detail, to the rhythm of phrase and sentence, that I think of them as poems. I never knew about this book until a few months ago; it’s great.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I’ve been looking forward for a couple of years now — as it’s been delayed several times — to the publication of Architecture of Dispersed Life: Selected Poems by Pablo de Rokha; translated by Urayoán Noel (Shearsman Books, 2018.) This will be the first book-length translation into English of work by one of Chile’s greatest twentieth century poets.

J. Mark Smith‘s verse translations (from Chilean Spanish) of poems by Winétt de Rokha have appeared recently in Shearsman and The Fortnightly Review. His essay “The Richest Boy in the World” was published in Queen’s Quarterly 122: 1 (Spring 2015). He teaches in the English Department at MacEwan University. Read his poem “Prayers for C. Elegans and H. Sapiens” in Issue 14:1. 

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Crystal Hurdle

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I loved AUGURIES by Clea Roberts.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
​Have been excited to read verse novels for middle-grade readers and am keen on reading more.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Bring on fiction titles by Erdrich, Cusk, and Wolitzer, not to mention volume one of Sylvia Plath’s collected letters.  At over 1300 words, it may well be a book I’ll still be reading in 2019!

Crystal Hurdle teaches English and Creative Writing at Capilano University in North Vancouver, BC. In October 2007, she was Guest Poet at the International Sylvia Plath Symposium at the University of Oxford, reading from After Ted & Sylvia: Poems. Her work, poetry and prose, has been published in many journals, including Canadian Literature, The Literary Review of Canada, Event, Bogg, Fireweed, and The Dalhousie Review. Teacher’s Pets, a teen novel in verse, was published in 2014. Read her poem “Bog People” in Issue 14:1, and her poem “Veterinarian Dr. Bondo” in Issue 14:2. 

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You can read all the poets featured in this edition of our Year in Review in Vallum Issue 14:1.

Look out for more Year in Review responses from poets featured in Vallum coming later this month!

And be sure to check out our Poem of the Week blog for 52 of our favourite poems this year.

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“Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden

Frederick Douglass

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

 

Robert Hayden (1913-1980) was an American poet, essayist and educator, and the first African-American to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. “Frederick Douglass” is taken from The Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, (Liveright, 1997). Copyright © Robert Hayman, 1966.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE!

Download the FREE APP and FREE SAMPLE EDITION for your tablet, kindle or smartphone through PocketMags OR iTunes.

 

Vallum 2016 Year in Poetry, Part 2

Yesterday we brought you Part 1 of our Year in Poetry questionnaire, in which we asked our recent contributors:

1) What was your Favourite Poetry Book?

2) What was your Discovery of the Year? and

3) What advice do you have for 2017?

We received so many thoughtful responses we couldn’t fit them all in one place, so without further ado, we bring you Part 2 of Vallum: Contemporary Poetry‘s Year in Poetry.

Mary Jo Bang

1. My favourite poetry book published in 2016 is The Wug Test by Jennifer Kronovet. Kronovet’s book is a correction to the bizarre idea being put forward recently by some that language doesn’t mean anything, that a politician can tell lies or utter hate speech and then say he or she was “just kidding,” or that someone can maintain that there are no “facts” and therefore politically self-serving statements must not be questioned.

As a reviewer in Publishers Weekly wrote: “Rigorously intellectual and compassionate in its approachability, this second collection from Kronovet (Awayward), a 2015 National Poetry Series winner, employs linguistics research to probe how language makes ‘the world a glass we fill by speaking.’ There is a fierce and tender optimism in the notion that ‘a box can be// a word can be a ship can be/ the blank that takes us to each other.’ Tenderness is at the core of these poems, and Kronovet turns over each word carefully as only an attentive lover of language can.”

2. For me, there were two exciting discoveries of the year in poetry. One was via Vivian Pollak’s Our Emily Dickinsons (University of Pennsylvania Press). Pollak’s book examines Dickinson’s hold on the poetic imagination of Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath. The book made me realize how radically misrepresented Dickinson has been by scholars and biographers who have often made her seem high-strung and neurasthenic, always speaking haltingly from behind a just-ajar door. Pollak gives us not one but many Emilys, none measured by neurotic insufficiency, but all living a robust poetic life—and an equally robust afterlife in which she profoundly influenced other strong women poets. The value of Vivian Pollak’s book, which I am certain will be lasting, is that by tracing her influence, Pollak reveals a Dickinson that is less fragile, more capable, more knowingly engaged in poetic de-familiarization.

The second discovery was via Terese Svoboda’s Anything that Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet (Schaffner Press). I had never read poems by Lola Ridge and yet, as Svoboda makes clear, I should have. Ridge was a major figure in American Modernism who enjoyed a wide readership during her lifetime, published many books, some of which won major prizes, and was a mentor to others poets whose work is still read today. Her work influenced Hart Crane, among others. I was rather stunned by how quickly and how completely she was forgotten after she died in 1941. She clearly deserves to be read and remembered. Without her, modernist history is incomplete.

3. More than ever before, we have to be diligent in speaking out against any attempt for people, especially politicians, to manipulate language in a manner that undermines fact and truth. We have to raise our voices to protect every kind of natural diversity—skin color, sexual identity, ethnicity, country of origin. We have to protect the rights of women to control their bodies and their minds. We have to ensure free public education. It’s a tall order, but if we fail to do any of these things, we will put the fabric of our society at risk. And if we don’t protect the air and water and land, we will destroy every hope we have for a future.

Mary Jo Bang‘s most recent collection of poems is The Last Two Seconds (2015, Graywolf Press); a new collection, A Doll for Throwing, will be published by Graywolf in August 2017. See Mary Jo’s poem “The Scurrying White Mice Disappear” in Vallum 13:2.

John Wall Barger

1. My favourite was The Deleted World, a tiny book of Tranströmer’s poems. The translations (by Robin Robertson) are good, but really I’ll take any excuse to revisit Tranströmer’s frozen visionary landscape. I love how he flashes from a personal detail to the earth to some (visionary) truth about existence: “I close my eyes. / There is a silent world, / there is a crack / where the dead / are smuggled over the border.” And he is not afraid, as so many of us are nowadays, of talking about the soul.

2. A friend recommended Alice Oswald. She’s amazing! Her new book, Falling Awake, packs a punch, but in a subtle, quiet, pensive way. I find I crave such poems, maybe because that energy is the opposite of my own. I love her delicious, delicate repetitions and music (“What is the word for wordless, when the ground / bursts into crickets?”). She has me staring at the hawks circling above our house, and writing aubades.

3. I just reread one of my favourite novels, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. It’s set in the US in 1850, “in a time before nomenclature was and each was all.” The language is so astoundingly fresh: King James archaisms, southern colloquialisms, apocalyptic metaphor, and more. As I read I kept wondering how in hell McCarthy did that. I mean, did he have a photographic memory, or had he collected thousands of quotes—I pictured his walls covered with taped Bible pages, fortune cookies, newspaper clippings, overheard phrases—to use in his books? Then it occurred to me: it’s all him, inventing, not copying. He’s inside that nomenclature. It never happened, nobody ever spoke that way, it’s his alone. It was a lightning bolt moment for me, about voice. Up to a point we collect and repeat, then we become the engine of our own unique diction.

In 2016, John Wall Barger came out with two chapbooks (“Samovar / Dukkha” (Baseline Press) and “The Vnfortunate Report & Tragicall Tidings of Leslie Barger” (Thee Hellbox Press)), and his poems are forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, Cimarron Review, Freefall, and Arc. See John’s poem “The Swans Flew Out of the Sun” in Vallum 13:1.

Lorna Crozier

1. Matthew Dickman’s Mayakovsky’s Revolver, Norton, 2012.

2. A new book that just came out with Frontenac House Poetry, Blood Orange by Heidi Garnett. Powerful, heart-breaking poems about the author’s family experience in WW2 Germany.

3. For 2017 I have no advice for anyone else, just for myself. To try to do the next right thing to stop the terrible destruction of our beautiful planet and the creatures who live here.

Lorna Crozier‘s The Wrong Cat (McClelland and Stewart, 2015) won the Pat Lowther Award and the Raymond Souster Award. See Lorna’s poem “Modesty” in Vallum 12:2.

Amanda Earl

1. Sandra Ridley, Silvija (Book Thug, 2016): dark, incantatory, potent & important work.

2. Adele Barclay (having first read a poem of hers in The Fiddlehead, then more online & finally in her first trade book: If I Were In A Cage I’d Reach Out for You (Nightwood Editions, 2016); another answer: Montreal as a hotbed of luscious & brilliant poets.

3. Write bad ass poems to try and help yourself & others cope with/distract yourself from the pending doom many of us feel now that we’re in a post-truth, post-compassion era. Make art & publish the art of outsiders. Let the inside eat its own tail.

Amanda Earl is working on a poetry manuscript entitled Grace: city poems under the influence of Barnes, Buckley, Cixous, Jacobs, the seasons, melancholy & gin. More info: AmandaEarl.com & on Twitter: @KikiFolle. See Amanda’s poem “Bedlam Spring” in Vallum 13:2.

Jill Jorgenson

1. Big shout-out to Robyn Sarah and her GG award-winning book My Shoes Are Killing Me.

2. Not a book, but indubitably poetry nonetheless: Jane Siberry’s CD Ulysses’ Purse. She is absolutely a poet, and these gorgeously accompanied sung-poems slow my breath and my heartbeat, induce a space of peace and calm.

3. Advice?? Well that feels audacious. About poetry, or just period? I feel inclined to want to put out there some nebulous, but fervent notions about Love and Oneness and Being in the Now, all substantially unhelpful “advice” indeed, so I’ll just say… Remember this paradox: everything matters, and none of it matters. It’s true.

Also, one further wisp of advice: check out the 2014 Cormorant release Looking East Over My Shoulder, by Jill Jorgenson. See Jill’s poem “Spit” in Vallum 12:2.

Richard Kelly Kemick

1. Michael Prior’s Model Disciple. 

2. I read Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband for the FIRST TIME. Yes, I know––I’m a bit late to the party. But you know what, this Carson person isn’t half bad. I think she could really go places.

3. I’ve recently admitted that I like white wine better than red wine. I have a suspicion that everyone feels this way but “society” is keeping us down. My advice is to embrace white wine and admit it is, at the end of the day, the far better choice.

Richard Kelly Kemick‘s Caribou Run is out now on icehouse press. See Richard’s poem “Ode to What is Left Behind” in Vallum 10:2.

Adam Lawrence

1. Shane Neilson’s Meniscus (2009).

I admit, I liked the way the paper felt in my hands, but I also enjoyed the poems that explored sickness/healing. I’m a New Brunswick boy, too, like Neilson, and I was happy to see some allusions to Alden Nowlan–one of my favorite Atlantic Canadian poets.

2. Matt Robinson (from Halifax, NS). He’s quickly become one of my favourites. I got hooked by the title poem of the chapbook a fist made and then un-made (2013), and am happy to see he’s got a new collection out.

3. No. I’m always looking for wisdom, really, enjoying each new book as a new horizon, a new world–like Prospero says to Miranda in The Tempest: “‘Tis new to thee.”

Adam Lawrence‘s writing has appeared in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Salon, Vallum, and JSTOR Daily. See Adam’s poem “The Wish” in Vallum 13:1.

Blaine Marchand

1. And With Thy Spirit  by April Bulmer (Hidden Book Press, 2016). I have not read April’s work for many decades. Her latest book of poetry is an exploration of spirituality. This book is the work of a mature artist who knows her métier, who is gifted in her telling and brave with honesty.

2. physical by Andrew McMillan (Cape Poetry, 2015). A birthday gift and a wonderful one. He is a British poet of whom I was not aware. His work is a powerful voice speaking about gay male love.

even this page is white by Vivek Shraya (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016). An important book even though I found it at times more polemic than poetic. The layout, which also conveys the central idea, is fantastic. What she says needs to be heard and considered.

3. A centuries old Shakespearean one – “To thine own self be true.” Keep on writing poetry in your own voice despite what others may say. Susan Glickman had an interesting post on Facebook – “accessible was now considered proof of insufficient artistry”. I have been thinking a lot about that since. In each generation, there are dominate poetic styles and each generation has the tendency to see the previous one’s as no longer relevant. Surely in the Canadian poetry scene, there is space for multiple voices and styles. All should be allowed to speak and given their due.

Blaine Marchand is currently working on two poetry manuscripts, Where You Dwell and My Head Filled With Pakistan, and a short story collection, Nomads. See Blaine’s poems “The Cracking of Foundations” and “The Stealth of Snow” in Vallum 13:1.

Cassidy McFadzean

1. Moez Surani’s Operations, a book-length poem that lists the names of military operations, truly underlines the power held by individual words. Since reading Operations, I’ve tried to be more precise in my use of language both in poetry and in everyday life.

2. I spent much of November reading the collected Lydia Davis, often holding in tears or laughter as I rode the bus to work.

3. It is more important than ever to read diverse books!

Cassidy McFadzean has new poems coming out in PRISM International, The Humber Literary Review, and Numéro Cinq. See Cassidy’s poem “American Harpy” in Vallum 13:2.

Ilona Martonfi

1. Jan Zwicky’s String Practice, Vallum chapbook. And Nox by Anne Carson.

2. Kelly Norah Drukker’s, Small Fires, published with McGill-Queen’s University Press

3. “Even if a line was brilliant and beautiful, if it’s not furthering the thrust and life of the poem, it needs to be cut.” –Ada Limón

Ilona Martonfi, author of The Snow Kimono, (Inanna Publications, 2015). Forthcoming, Salt Bride, (Inanna Publications, Spring 2019). See Ilona’s poem “Dandelion Snow” in Vallum 11:1.

Ruth Roach Pierson

1. Edward Hirsch, Gabriel: A Poem (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

2. Olena Kalytiak Davis, The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2014); shattered sonnets love cards and other off and back handed importunities (Copper Canyon Press, 2003/2014); And Her Soul Our of Nothing (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).

3. Remember that poetry is solace for the soul, a powerful antidote to the madness of the politics that gives politics a bad name.

“I had the pleasure of reading poems with Maureen Hynes and John Reibetanz at an event sponsored by Larry Robin’s Moonstone Arts Centre in Philadelphia on September 30 and with a large group of Canadian poets at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC on October 9 and launching my second chapbook, Untranslatable Thought (Anstruther Press, 2016), at the Abbozzo Gallery in Toronto on October 15.” See Ruth’s poem “A Newfoundland Chimera” in Vallum 13:1.

Michael J. Shepley

1. For 2016, my unearthing in a clean up of the Billy Collins collection called Picnic, Lightning. I bought it with intent a couple years ago. Since I subtitled one of my efforts “after the style of B. Collins,” in that I had heard a couple of his humorous poems read on Prairie Home Companion, I decided to dig in. I liked the material, smooth as good whisky. But I have to elide that subtitle. He has humor, but Jazz and nature and, I’d say, a bit of melancholy are closer to his soul.

2. I read a good many poems, from little publications, to the New Yorker‘s, and the Poem A Day series. I am afraid I have an “existential” attention span. Like almost in one ear, out the other after a short pause. Though that word figure does not translate well to reading…

But a recent Poem A Day has me intending to dig up some William Carlos Williams because of the lines “a liquid moon/moves gently among/the long branches” and “the wise trees/stand sleeping/in the cold” since I like nature and season poems. (But I might have dumped cold for snows…don’t we all play the editor game?)

3. Like Mr. Natural- keep on truckin’ (I actually know a guy, Martin, who was a neighbor of the cartoonist R. Crumb when the guy fled the Bay Area for the bucolic life around Winters, CA. In fact I have met a couple older folk who claim to have played in Crumbs Rock band once upon a time. But old 60s gen memories are based in bent chops, so… I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting the legend). The old phrase can be interpreted as keep working it. Like, for writing, do everyday, then repeat .

Since late 2014, Michael J. Shepley has had poems in print at CA Quarterly, Muse International, and Seems, and online at Danse Macabre, Penumbra, Xanadu, and Pinyon. See Michael’s poem “November’s End” in Vallum 13:2.

Jan Zwicky

1. I’ve read too many fine books this year to be able to specify a favourite. But I recently finished an anthology that I can recommend highly: Dark Mountain 10, “Uncivilized Poetics”.

2. The anthology contains an essay by American poet Rob Lewis called “No Nature Poems, Please”; it did indeed make me sit up and take notice.

3. Deepen your love for the earth. As Mr. Lewis says, “Nature, slowly collapsing into silence, calls out louder than ever for the poet. Now we all need what the poet brings: the broken-open hearts of words, the wild articulation, the howl.”

Jan Zwicky’s most recent collection is The Long Walk. See an excerpt from Jan’s chapbook, String Theory, in Vallum 13:2.

John Sibley Williams

1. 2016 really was an incredible year for poetry, and I’d be hard pressed to label one book (or even ten) as my favourite. But a few of my favourites have been Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Sjohnna McCray’s Rapture, Jamaal May’s The Big Book of Exit Strategies, and Francine J. Harris’ Play Dead.

2. Definitely Keith Leonard’s debut collection Ramshackle Ode. Somehow this powerful book hasn’t made it to any “Best of 2016” lists I’ve seen. Though it just came out earlier this year, I’ve already read it twice.

3. Instead of advice or wisdom, how about a plea? The creative, free thinking, and open-hearted aspects of American culture are under political attack by certain figures whose rowdy bases are prepared to intimidate, censor, and harm those of us who cherish diversity, those of us who choose love over discord. So I challenge every poetry lover to spend 2017 reading collections by writers outside the traditional white-male-straight hierarchy. Read Middle Eastern poets, African poets, South American poets. Read poets representing the many indigenous tribes in the US and Canada. Read émigré poets. LGBTQ poets. Activist poets. 2017 will be a pivotal year for us all, so wield your love of poetry as a weapon against those who seek to divide us.

John Sibley Williams‘ most recent collection, Disinheritance (Apprentice House Press, 2016) is “A lyrical, philosophical, and tender exploration of the various voices of grief, including those of the broken, the healing, the son-become-father, and the dead. Disinheritance acknowledges loss while celebrating the uncertainty of a world in constant revision.” See John’s poem “It Was the Golden Age of Monsters” in Vallum 13:1.

 

A huge thanks and Happy New Year to all our readers and our contributors.

And be sure to check out Poem of the Week for 52 of our favourite poems this year.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE!

Download the FREE APP and FREE SAMPLE EDITION for your tablet, kindle or smartphone through PocketMags OR iTunes.

 

Vallum Newsletter November 2016

 

Vallum News! Find out about calls for submissions, contest winners, open contests, holiday promotions, and more!

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VALLUM CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

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14:1 –  “EVOLUTION”

Evolution has been instrumental to developments in science, industry, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, posthuman and technological advances, spirituality, relationships, and even the historical progression of “mind.” How does the idea of evolving, in its many possible forms, translate into poetry?

Send us your best poems!
DEADLINE: November 20, 2016

 

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Vallum Back-To-School & Fall Subscription 45% off

Get publishing!

This sale is for ALL poetry lovers, avid readers, and writers alike! For new writers, we offer some friendly & writerly advice: As you launch your new writing career, it is important to publish your poems in excellent journals, but also to tailor your submissions to the aesthetic of each specific journal. To help you achieve your literary goals, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry magazine is running a back-to-school & fall subscription sale, offering two beautiful issues at a 45% discounted rate of only $17 CAD / $21 USD! This amazing deal includes both the print and digital versions of the magazine!

In every issue of Vallum: Contemporary Poetry magazine, you can expect groundbreaking new poems, essays on literary craft, interviews with established writers, reviews of exciting new books, and more. Forthcoming in issue 13:2 “The Wild” are feral poems by Jan Zwicky, Evelyn Lau, Peter Dale Scott, Cassidy McFadzean, Yusuf Saadi, Richard Sanger, among others.

Visit www.vallummag.com/backtoschool.html to subscribe now!

Offer expires October 15th, 2016

LAST CHANCE TO ENTER- Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

LAST CHANCE !

We hope the warm weather has inspired some winning poems!

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NEW DEADLINE: JULY 31st @ MIDNIGHT 
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ONLY ONE DAY LEFT TO ENTER- Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

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DEADLINE EXTENDED to JULY 31st- Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

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DON’T MISS YOUR CHANCE TO ENTER THE VALLUM AWARD FOR POETRY 2016!

KEEP YOUR EYE ON $1000 IN PRIZES!

NEW DEADLINE: JULY 31st @ MIDNIGHT (postmarked)

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FINAL CALL- Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

FINAL CALL !

THE VALLUM AWARD FOR POETRY 2016

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DEADLINE: JULY 15 @ MIDNIGHT 
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JUDGE: JERAMY DODDS

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